Julie Meilland, a researcher specialising in the ecology of planktonic foraminifera, was awarded the Alan Higgins Award in November 2025, The prize is awarded each year to a young scientist for his or her contributions to applied and industrial micropalaeontology.
Its work has led to maintaining planktonic foraminifera in continuous culture over several generations, and to demonstrate for the first time the importance of the asexual reproduction in these marine micro-organisms. This advance opens up new prospects for calibrating geochemical proxies and for cellular and molecular studies that were previously impossible.
At CEREGE, Julie is currently developing a continuous culture facility based on these discoveries (Meilland et al., 2023 & 2024). She is studying the distribution and population dynamics of planktonic foraminifera in order to gain a better understanding of their habitat and their role in the biological carbon cycle.
In this context, the laboratory recently welcomed a PhD student from the University of Southampton, Julian Fuchs, and plans to welcome other visitors from European institutes from next spring.
Rewarded works include
- Continuous reproduction of planktonic foraminifera in laboratory culture, on multi-generational clonal reproduction in cultivation.
- Rare but persistent asexual reproduction explains the success of planktonic foraminifera in polar oceans, on the role of asexual reproduction in the success of polar species.